Nor'easter Threatens Thanksgiving Travel Chaos for East Coast,A Powerful winter storm forecast to disrupt the Thanksgiving travel plans of millions of Americans began its march up the East Coast early Wednesday.
The nor'easter was already bringing rain from northern Florida to Maryland by 3:30 a.m. ET and forecasters warned it would bring up to 12 inches of snow in some areas as it moved north on one of the busiest travel days of the year.
The New York, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and Boston metro areas would likely see snow before noon ET and could expect as much as three inches throughout the day, according to Kevin Roth, lead meteorologist at The Weather Channel. The biggest snowfall accumulations were expected in a swath from the Poconos to Maine.
"If this was any other day of the year it would be a pretty big storm but nothing too out of the ordinary," Roth added. "But it’s come at one of the worst possible times, the day before Thanksgiving. It’s going to be very, very tricky for anyone planning to travel today.
For those traveling by air, more than 220 flights had already been canceled in or out of the United States by 3:30 a.m., more than a third of these at Newark Liberty International and New York’s LaGuardia airport.
The Defense Department said it would open up unused military airspace for commercial flights Wednesday through Sunday. The airspace, mainly on the East Coast and throughout the Gulf of Mexico and the Southwest, will make available "more highways in the sky that we can move planes through to get people to their destination efficiently," said Michael Huerta, administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration.
Roth said the cut-off line between heavy and light snow was likely to be very abrupt. "Someone could go from an inch in the southeast of a city and drive 10 miles northwest and find themselves in more than 10 inches," he said.
The National Weather Service issued winter storm warnings — many upped from winter weather advisories — across a large icicle-shaped area from the Canada Border to North Carolina. The snow was likely to wind up in most places by Wednesday night but would linger in Boston until early Thursday, according to Roth.
